INFOGRAPHIC SERIES - Lawn Sprinkler

Playing in a lawn sprinkler is nothing but fun. Creating one is fun too! Learn a few cool tricks to making the water look like dots or flowing water streams in this tutorial. 

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Create an Arc with the Arc Tool. Hold SHIFT to create a perfect 1/4 arc. 

Change the color of the stroke to blue and cap the ends of the stroke in the Stroke Panel.

Select the Arc and RIGHT + CLICK on it. Choose Transform>Reflect

Reflect the arc on the vertical axis and click COPY.

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Place the 2 arcs apart to allow for other arcs in between. Use the BLEND TOOL and click on the first Arc, then the second Arc. 

Double click on the Blend Tool in the tool bar to open the dialog box. Select Specified Steps from the drop-down menu. 

Click the Preview button to see the results then increase the number of steps.

This is the result of the blend tool blending both shapes. Keep in mind that these lines in between are an effect, not real lines yet.

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To turn the Blend Effect into lines, choose Object>Expand. Then click OK. 

Once these have been expanded, all the lines will now be editable.

To change the length of the water streams, open the Stroke Panel, click on Dashed Line, then add random lengths of gaps and strokes in the lines

This is the result of the random length strokes and lines. 

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Use the Direct Selection Tool to increase the heights of the lines to get more of a crown-look to the water. 

To create the base, start with a rectangle. 

Direct-Select the top 2 corners and pull the corner widgets in a small amount. 

Create another wider rectangle for the base. 

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Select both shapes, and Unite the shapes in the Pathfinder Panel.

Group the water spray together then create a rectangle over the water sprays. Make sure the box cuts off the bottom edge of the water to give it a flat edge. 

Select both the box and the water spray then choose Object>Clipping Mask>Make. Or COMMAND + 7. This will clip the water and give the appearance of the flat bottom. 

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Add some highlight lines to the base, I added a few dots to give it a reflective look. 

Select the base shape, click on the Draw Inside button at the bottom right of the Tool Bar. 

Create a rectangle that is darker that covers about 1/2 the base. Then click the Draw Normal button at the bottom left of the Tool Bar to exit this mode. 

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One trick to get perfect round dots on a line is this tip here. Create a line with rounded end caps, then used the Dashed line feature. set the dash length to ZERO. 

Dotted line are lines with ZERO length and rounded ends. Basically it is 2 rounded ends together with no length that give you a dotted line.

Either way, the lines look like a fun time with the water spraying. Enjoy!